Bill Hill, who elaborated on the “Perpetual Tourist” concept developed by Harry Schultz, advocated a “five flags” strategy for anybody (not just the ultra-wealthy) who sought privacy, individual liberty, and freedom from coercive state intervention in their lives. The five flags are as follows:
- Passport and Citizenship. Any country unconcerned about activities of its offshore citizens. Definitely not your present home country.
- Business Base. Places where you actually make your money. Again, different from your personal fiscal domicile.
- Domicile. A tax haven with good communication where wealthy, productive people can be creative and enjoy prosperity with bank secrecy and little threat of social unrest.
- Asset Haven. A place from which assets, securities, and business affairs can be managed anonymously, by proxy.
- Playgrounds. Places where you actually spend your time, enjoying life to the fullest.
These tend to be different kinds of places, and separating them (and, where possible and appropriate, diversifying within them) improves security, flexibility, and options when things are changing rapidly. Putting everything in one basket is a prescription for disaster when the bottom of the basket falls out or the people running it (or the latest gang to take control) decide, as Doug Casey says,
The day is coming when your local government may stop seeing you as a milk cow and start seeing you as a beef cow, and you want to have options before that day.